Upon raising his mighty peacock staff into the sky, powerful sorcerer Jimmy Fallon has made his decree: reunited indie rock group The Dismemberment Plan are to appear on the Fallon-hosted Late Night. No mortal man dare refuse the feared late night host, lest he face ?uestlove, strongest of all warlords, and his Roots ninja squad. Since The D-Plan value their lives (and have already gone ahead and booked a string of reunion shows), they will comply and appear on the program on January 20. Let us all hope that the band’s rendition of “Face of the Earth” (or whatever they choose to play) proves satisfactory to Fallon, else he may loose unholy thunder upon the band and his studio audience.

Even if you don’t know what a tape deck is, you should be excited about the new Tape Deck Mountain EP, Secret Serf, scheduled for a January 11 release through Lefse.

Why should you be excited? Because it’s the follow-up to the band’s 2009 LP release, Ghost, and looks to be a more focused, more exploratory record that expands on the band’s already entertaining sound! Also, it has a great tongue-in-cheek title that pokes fun at indie rock’s recent “beach” trend. Finally, the album will explore “themes of poverty and privacy, perhaps inspired by frontman Travis Trevisan’s recent bout with unemployment where he worked various under-the-table jobs extending from working for the repo man to pulling his elderly neighbors’ weeds;” and everyone loves art made about poverty! See, that’s why you should be excited!

The band has also scheduled a couple shows in California so if you can find the time in-between your daily body-surfing exercises you should go watch them!

With so many albums already planned for release in 2011, British Sea Power are determined to make their album stick in your head. In fact, they’ve even gone so far as to pick a release date that you couldn’t possibly forget, no matter how drunk you get on New Year’s Eve. British Sea Power’s new album, Valhalla Dancehall, is due January 11, 2011 (a.k.a. 1/11/11 for those that like numbers) from Rough Trade. You can download the first single, “Living Is So Easy,” right now on iTunes or via the band’s website. Will it be as good as 2008’s Do You Like Rock Music? (TMT Review)? Nobody knows…

Valhalla Dancehall tracklisting:

01. Who’s in Control
02. We Are Sound
03. Georgie Ray
04. Stunde Null
05. Mongk II
06. Luna
07. Baby
08. Living Is So Easy
09. Observe the Skies
10. Cleaning Out the Rooms
11. Thin Black Sail
12. Once More Now
13. Heavy Water

News of Wolf Parade’s recent hiatus hit everyone hard, but none harder than Dan Boeckner. While the decision was seemingly as much in his interest as everyone else in the band, look at the man now. He’s clearly putting on a brave face and swallowing all his sadness by immediately announcing a Handsome Furs tour! The guy’s hurting so bad that he’s running off to Europe to give himself a little time to think, as well as play some shows. It’s alright, Dan, it will all make sense in time.

Attention illegal music downloaders: do you use Google to help you find pirate music sites? You do? Well, you better find another way to get your free music because Google has announced four new policies that they will be implementing in the next several months that they hope will help curb access to pirated music content. However, as we all know, they probably won’t work because it takes a lot more than what they have planned to seriously deter music piracy.

01: Google will act on reliable copyright takedown requests within 24 hours.
02: Google will prevent terms that are closely associated with piracy from appearing in Autocomplete.
03: Google will improve our AdSense anti-piracy review.
04: Google will experiment to make authorized preview content more readily accessible in search results.

What does all this mean? It means that little 12-year-olds who don’t have money and go on the internet looking for free music will have a harder time finding it when they use Google to search for “free pirated music” but all of the people who already use pirate websites will continue typing web addresses right into their web browser’s URL slot. Way to go Google, keep that finger in the dike.

The RIAA seems pleased though: “These are encouraging and positive first steps towards a more sensible online experience for both users and the music community. Google deserves credit for proposing a constructive set of reforms and undertaking useful steps to better protect the rights of creators and encourage legal ways to enjoy music. While there is much more work to be done, this announcement is an important acknowledgment that everyone involved in the online ecosystem has a shared responsibility to constructively address the online piracy problem that is devastating the creative industries.”

In other words: “Make sure we stop losing money because we need our money and we need it now.”

Asthmatic Kitty electronic artist Epstein (a.k.a. Robert Lange) has had a pretty good year, what with putting out a series of remixes, collaborating with Julianna Barwick, and putting out a new LP called When Man Is Full He Falls Asleep (TMT Review). Nestled within two copies of that LP happened to be golden tickets, the recipients of which were given full access to the Epstein archives and commissioned to construct a remix album together. Thankfully, the lucky winners of that contest were Prefuse 73 and Yeasayer member Jaytram. Man, Asthmatic Kitty really dodged a bullet there, considering they could have ended up putting out an album constructed by, say, me and a 15-year-old with a freshly downloaded copy of Fruity Loops. Instead, the label will be releasing the quite literally-titled Prefuse 73/Jaytram/Epstein on December 13. The release will be available for download through Epstein’s Bandcamp page for a pay-what-you-want price. And while I’m sure Prefuse and Jaytram had some excellent ideas, me and that 15-year-old really wanted to explore the effect of kazoo MIDIs on Epstein’s music. Perhaps another day.